Thursday, February 05, 2015

An article
at Gallup does a pretty thorough job of debunking official
unemployment statistics -- by using a phalanx of facts one could
describe as "unemployed" or "underemployed" by most politicians and
journalists. I knew about many of these already, but not this one:

There's another reason why the official rate is
misleading. Say you're an out-of-work engineer or healthcare worker or
construction worker or retail manager: If you perform a minimum of
one hour of work in a week and are paid at least $20 -- maybe someone
pays you to mow their lawn -- you're not officially counted as
unemployed in the much-reported 5.6%. Few Americans know
this. [bold added]

And credit author and Gallup CEO Jim
Clifton for using another word that, in today's political discourse,
oddly wouldn't be counted in the official employment rate if it were a
human being: lie.

Clifton ends his piece by citing
one statistic I have little trouble believing: "Right now, the U.S. is
delivering [jobs] at a staggeringly low rate of 44%, which is the number of
full-time jobs as a percent of the adult population..." That's bad, but the most
disturbing part of this story to me is that it demonstrates a
remarkable lack of demand for facts by many of those who wish to remain
"informed", and by many of those who elect our politicians.